Monday, February 25, 2008

Sally Pollack at The Burlington Free Press reviews Leland Kinsey's new collection of poems, The Immigrant's Contract in the "Big Ideas" section. She writes that 'Kinsey's book-length poem functions nonetheless as biography and history – and as an original and riveting form of both. His work is a strong and moving evocation of a person, a place and a way of living that exist no longer.'

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Another review of Andrew Motion's memoir In the Blood in the New York Times today. Richard Eder writes that 'Andrew Motion, Britain’s current poet laureate, has written a childhood memoir that is Arcadian in the first or golden sense, though not without pain. . . . The memoir’s energy lies less in a vital urge to face the past than in an urge to shape it with language.'

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

At BiblioBuffet, there is a great interview with Arthur Krystal, and some very kind words about his collection of essays The Half-Life of an American Essayist. Lisa Guidarini writes, 'Whether writing on topics such as beauty, sin or laziness, literary essayist Arthur Krystal embodies the very best of what the essay should be: informative, interesting and eclectic. Elucidating his subjects by way of his at literary yet accessible style, his refreshingly snarky wit shines through in a way that’s completely endearing. It’s hard to imagine a more delightful or appealing combination in an essayist.'

Kingdom Books in Vermont has posted a very nice review at their website of our upcoming collection of poems The Immigrant's Contract, by Leland Kinsey. Beth Kanell writes, 'There it is: That taste of a tongue that's word-swollen from another time and another experience. . . . Here's what Philip Levine might sound like if he'd been raised among the water and wood mills of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, instead of finding his way in the factories of Detroit.'

Friday, February 8, 2008

'Light verse of an elegantly whimsical bent has long been a sideline trade for the industrious poet and novelist Brad Leithauser, who nevertheless once likened the genre to the Carolina parakeet, a candy-colored chatterbox that's been extinct for more than a century. One gathers he wasn't entirely kidding, which would explain why he seems determined not to let the charms and graces of larksome versifying die out.

Leithauser's latest collaboration with his brother, Mark, an artist and senior curator at the National Gallery of Art, has the retro feel of a cozy fireside picture book, but it's no antiquarian bauble: Arrayed in eight constellations of sprightly lyric sequences, mainly composed in neatly turned octaves and fine-tuned haiku stanzas, the poems brim with an urbane jeu d'esprit that knows the difference between the winsome and the twee, leaving no doubt as to just how much exacting discipline the delectations of sparkling light verse entail. Bracketing the book's mixed bag of impish bagatelles (ranging from "Periodic Riddles" on "Neon" and "Uranium" to a clutch of eldritch nocturnes called "Furnishings of the Moon") is a lively flyting match between the heralded songster and the lowly amphibian of the title, and anyone with a rooting interest in the survival of poetic wit and fancy should find it heartening as well as fitting that the underdog toad gets the last word: "Earth's fairest dreams are born of earth - / Born sometimes, even in the scummy Ooze of a drainage ditch . . . including those / Where I am your ventriloquist, / And you, my dear, my dummy." '

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

From the desk of The Daily Gazette: 'Swarthmore’s Newton competition is the oldest college book collection competition in the nation. Students vying for the top three places submit annotated bibliographies of their book collection, which are judged by committee of librarians and a faculty member. . . . First-place winner Jake Brunkard’s collection consists of about 65 books published by Black Sparrow Press, an independent press that publishes “underground” literature.' Glad we could help!

Monday, February 4, 2008

A very nice review of this beautiful memoir by the British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion – Langdon Hammer of The New York Times describes In the Blood as 'superbly clear, intimate and evocative,' and writes that 'The power of this sad, attractively modest memoir comes in his resistance, which can only fail, to the demandthat he grow up.'

Keep an eye on our events listings (to the left of this column) for Motion's readings and appearances in New York this Spring.